The successor to Stefan Jacoby, former president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, has finally been announced: Jonathan Browning will take over next month. His goals are ambitious, to say the least.

The 1,350-acre site on its way to becoming a Volkswagen plant was once home to an ammunitions operation producing bombs that dropped on Germany during World War II. "The federal government sat on it for a long, long time and wouldn't even talk about giving it up," says Ron Littlefield, mayor of the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Starting in 1994 — "about four mayors ago," as Claude Ramsey, the Hamilton County mayor, puts it — the city got serious about buying the land.